British Journal of DOI:10.1111/j.1476-5381.2011.01380.x www.brjpharmacol.org BJP Pharmacology Themed Section: Cannabinoids in Biology and Medicine, Part II Correspondence Neta Rimmerman, Arison Building 302, Department of RESEARCH PAPERbph_1380 2436..2449 Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel. E-mail:
[email protected] Compartmentalization of ---------------------------------------------------------------- Keywords cannabinoid; endocannabinoid; endocannabinoids into lipid lipid raft; membrane raft; microglia; Caveolin-1; flotillin-1; cannabidiol; CB1 receptor; mass rafts in a microglial cell line spectrometry ---------------------------------------------------------------- devoid of caveolin-1 Received 5 December 2010 Revised Neta Rimmerman1, Heather B Bradshaw2, Ewa Kozela3, Rivka Levy1, 3 March 2011 Ana Juknat3 and Zvi Vogel3 Accepted 10 March 2011 1Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, 2Psychological and brain sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA, and 3Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sakler School of Medicine, the Dr Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Center for the Biology of Addictive Diseases, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE N-acyl ethanolamines (NAEs) and 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2-AG) are endogenous cannabinoids and along with related lipids are synthesized on demand from membrane phospholipids. Here, we have studied the compartmentalization of NAEs and 2-AG into lipid raft fractions isolated from the caveolin-1-lacking microglial cell line BV-2, following vehicle or cannabidiol (CBD) treatment. Results were compared with those from the caveolin-1-positive F-11 cell line. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH BV-2 cells were incubated with CBD or vehicle. Cells were fractionated using a detergent-free continuous OptiPrep density gradient. Lipids in fractions were quantified using HPLC/MS/MS.